Julius Stahel

Julius Stahel-Szamwald (5 November 1825-4 December 1912) was a Hungarian-born Union Army Major-General during the American Civil War who received the Medal of Honor for gallantry at the Battle of Piedmont in 1864.

Biography
Julius Stahel was born in Szeged, Hungary, Austrian Empire in 1825, and he rose to the rank of lieutenant in the Austrian army before taking part of Lajos Kossuth's unsuccessful 1848 Hungarian revolution. After the revolution was crushed in 1849, he fled to Prussia, Britain, and then to the United States in 1859, where he worked for a German-language newspaper in New York City. In 1861, he and Louis Blenker recruited the 8th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment from German immigrants, and he became the regiment's lieutenant-colonel. His regiment was attached to the Army of the Potomac, and he fought at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 before fighting in the Valley Campaign in 1862. In July 1862, he became a brigade commander, and he became an acting division commander after Robert C. Schenck was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Stahel rose to division command in late 1862 and to Major-General on 14 March 1863, and he commanded the 1st Cavalry Division at the Battle of New Market on 15 May 1864. On 5 June 1864, at the Battle of Piedmont, Stahel distinguished himself under fire and was wounded in the shoulder, but he received the Medal of Honor on 4 November 1893 for leading the division until being wounded. He resigned on 8 February 1865 and went on to serve as US consul in Yokohama from 1866 to 1869, Osaka from 1877 to 1884, and to Shanghai from 1884 to 1885, as well as a life insurance company executive. He died in New York City in 1912.